Don't play with it

I stumble, but I do not fall. This cold shall leave me soon. I'm getting better. As for the metaphorical bits, that shall soon depart too. Nothing lasts forever. Everything comes to pass eventually. And sometimes we try to hold together things, we really ought to just let fall apart.

***

Anyways... Let the sick stop her rambling till she gets back her coherence.

The following are two excerpts from the most delightful book I read during the cruise into my illness. So I took my time about it... so what? Sometimes well punctuated (reading) is the way to go and fully appreciate the content.

Well.. here goes. It's two of my favourite parts in the novel.

Dean Koontz, LIFE EXPECTANCY

Every family is eccentric in its own way, however, as is each human being. Like the Tocks, they have their tics.

Eccentric means off or aside in its own way, or aside from what is considered normal. As a civilisation, through consensus, we agree on what is normal, but this consensus is as wide as a river, not as narrow as the high wire above a big top.

Even so, not one of us lives a perfectly normal, ordinary life in every regard. We are, after all, human beings, each of us unique to an extent that no member of any other species is different from others of its kind.

We have instinct but we are not ruled by it. We feel the pull of the mindless herd, the allure of the pack, but we resist the extreme effects of this influence -- and when we do not, we drag our societies down into the bloody wreckage of failed utopias, led by Hitler or Lenin, or Mao Tse-tung. And the wreckage reminds us that God gave us our individualism and that to surrender it is to follow a dark path.

When we fail to see the eccentricities in ourselves and to be amused by them, we become monsters of self-regard. Each in its own way, every family is as eccentric as mine. I guarantee it. Opening your eyes to this truth is to open your heart to humanity.

Read Dickens; he knew.

Those in my family don't wish to be anyone but who they are. They will not edit themselves to impress others.

They find their meaning in their quiet faith, in one another, and in the little miracles of their daily lives. They don't need ideologies or philosophies to define themselves. They are defined by living, with all senses engaged, with hope, and with a laugh ever ready.
pp. 200-201

******

...We had suffered a great deal en route to this safe harbor, but who does not suffer in life? When the pain passes, there is always cake.

Life insurance companies price their policies on the basis of many factors, including actuarial tables. They have arcane formulae to predict your life expectancy, and if they didn't they would soon be out of business.

I do not define life expectancy by the length of life, however, but by the quality of it, by what I expect from it and by how well my expectations are met. What I have learned from my true father, Rudy, and from my true mother, Maddy, and from my glorious wife, and from my beloved children is that the more you expect from life, the more your expectations will be fulfilled. By laughing, you do not use up your laughter, but increase your store of it. The more you love, the more you will be loved. The more you give, the more you will receive.
p. 472

Shelli is feeling sick again.
*cough*
*choke*
*cough*

Tuesday has been infected. She has classes on Monday... Eekies... So... one more person to catch the virus.. who knows.. maybe he really won't. He's lucky.

*choke*

*goes to rest*
*does melodramatic hand to forehead faint*
Shelli out.